2009-12-21

Basically the story here is that the black guy is upset that the camera isn't following his black face, but is following his coworker's white face. There are a couple things of course that, like any good racial overreaction, sort of defeat the argument.

First off, at one point while the camera is tracking the white girl, he moves into frame and the camera instead focuses on him, ignoring her. It continues to not track him properly, but clearly it notices his face. Secondly, as several commenters noted, he's in a dark room with the contrasts set low: basic physics means that the sensors are going to have to be calibrated far more sensitively in order for it to follow his face: and there will be some false positives associated with it. That's not Hewlett-Packard's racism, that's just reality.

But since he's clearly getting so menstrated up over this whole ordeal, its only fair to comment on his video offensively. So far I have the following two additions to this oeuvre:

Its all a giant misunderstanding,﻿ people. The camera doesn't follow faces, it only follows souls.

(in response to another commenter that somebody should invent a camera that only follows black people):I think a lot of companies﻿ would pay big money for this technology. Jewelry stores come to mind.